Hello Brendon

I was the archaeologist involved with the pine planting and land clearance on Ahuahu in 1983. The fire in the south east corner of Ahuahu was in 1983 (or very early 1984) from memory, (certainly not 1981) and was the result of a bulldozer catching fire. The southern part of the island (excluding the coastal fringes) was being prepared for planting in pine trees. There was manuka and gorse present throughout the area on very eroded rhyolite with little topsoil over most of the area. The method of clearance was, from recollection, two bulldozers with a chain or ball between them which flattened everything inbetween. This was then left to dry. The intention was to do a controlled burn when the conditions were right but when the bulldozer caught fire there was a strong wind and it got out of control. Helicopters with monsoon buckets were used to bring it under control. It only burnt the south east corner but was none-the-less a substantial burn area. I don't think it could be called 'The Great Fire'. Pat Mizen's book also recounts a tradition called "the Great Fire" which by his reckoning happened in the 1600s and destroyed all the vegetation on the island. The archaeological research team has been working on the island for 7 years and conducted numerous excavations as well as cored swamps for vegetation and sediment deposition history. We have no evidence for this "great fire". Initial clearance of vegetation by Polynesians certainly is reflected in the record, as is the subsequent sediment movement. It appears the vegetation clearance by burning was patchy and did not happen everywhere at the same time, but once the primary forest was burnt it did not have the opportunity to grow back, instead becoming a mixed vegetation of shrubs and other species. We have written a paper about this which will be published early next year in Archaeology in Oceania.

Louise

Hello Louise,

That's very helpful and informative. What's you view of the details in the NZ Geographic "Treasure Island" article by James Frankham?: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/treasure-island/

Regards, Brendon

Hi Brendon

The article has a particular focus but makes some assumptions about the wider ecology. Yes, rats were introduced but Polynesians also made a lot of changes which cannot be rolled back. The article assumes the vegetation was intact through the Polynesian era but it wasn't. We are coring the swamps on the island looking at vegetation change and the arrival of Polynesians is visible in this history - loss of forest vegetation almost immediately after arrival, increase in sedimentation, and the regrowth shrubs was burnt so often (gardening) that the forest species never had an opportunity to recover. It seems to me that the issues for island restoration are about more than animals - there would have been plant associations which cannot be replicated (if we knew what they were), and biodiversity also unknown. The island had been separated from the mainland for 10 000 years, allowing other changes to occur as the climate continued to change. However, there is also a unique cultural landscape on Ahuahu reflecting 800 years of Polynesian and Maori occupation. This is as important as restoring natural environments, influencing issues such as revegetation, and how we deal with sea birds burrowing into archaeological sites. We will be publishing an article early next year which deals with a lot of the vegetation change documented in the pollen cores.

The article is also incorrect in saying that the great fire burnt 675 ha to the ground. Not much of the remaining indigenous vegetation caught fire - poutukawa on cliffs around part of the southeast end - but most of the damage was limited to crushed manuka scrub. It certainly wasn't 675 hectares either.

Louise